The LED Drama
Have you ever noticed that we tend to believe everything that the internet, TV, music, or theatre shows us? Every single trend, every single conflict people are talking about, every way of thinking we have, is supplied by the media.
Conflicts with muslims. Making a joke out of racism. Making fun of imperfect bodies. Unconsciously starting to wear and say the same things celebrities do (coff, coff, Kardashians, coff). Every progressive and conservative idea we can possibly think of is supported and carried forward by social media, TV, series, songs, videos, news…everything, made even more accessible through today’s rapid growing technology. This, of course, is an over-generalization, but it’s true that no matter what sort of media it is, with whatever bias, it’s still a from of education in our society. From History channel alien documentaries, to sitcoms, to latin soap operas like “La Rosa de Guadalupe”.
So I interviewed Joella Maes, a sophomore, about what she thought of media, and the power it holds. Joe, of course, is absolutely involved in media- she loves movies, music, and she’s a great actress. For her, media is “a really good resource to become open minded, depending on what you look for in it.” But how can it help someone become open-minded? As Joe puts it, “having a variety of media and different opinions can be really beneficial in such a big society, because if you know that there’s a bunch of opinions out there, you know that it’s safe to have a different one than the rest. However, it can get really scary when opinions receive violence, like gender, or race, or anything that you identify with and is underrepresented.” Media has definitely progressed in freedom of speech, but it can also lead to aggression and stereotypes.
Gender expectations, for example. When have we not seen that in movies, advertisements, songs and TV, women and men are defined by what we see? There are no men for makeup advertisements, the woman you see in shows is successful because of her beauty, and in songs we hear all about men dominating the woman or a woman seeking to ‘catch’ a man. “In some ways I really like the heightened, non-sense of reality you get from tv shows because sometimes reality sucks”, Joey tells me, “but I’d like to be more represented in the media, as far as feeling like there aren’t many women who are represented as strong because they’re a women, but represented as strong because they’re a ‘functioning, opinionated person who has the ability to choose instead of relying on a man or a partner’.” What about body types? Media sets unrealistic standards for both, with women being thin and beautiful, and men being ripped and tall. “I know that when I see a plus sized model or someone who stands strong, even if she, he, or they are getting bad opinions, I know that that helps empower many people”, says Joe. Even religion is warped through media. The way we perceive Christians, Muslims, and Jews can all be defined and shaped by how TV, news, series, theatre and music make us see them, be it with headline news, or comedy.
Media also projects the new trends, ways of thinking and acting due to famous people, and the viewers use this to shape their identity, too. Joe says she knows this to be true, because she’s one of those people that has been influenced by celebrities’ way of thinking. “I have always been entranced by the idea of being famous, I feel a lot of us are. It’s the thing that most of us in our current generation aspire to be. It’s easier than ever now, but we have this idea that celebrities and people that are portrayed through the media are perfect, even if they're scandalous. W just believe that they’re heightened. It’s just another form of believing someone has more power than you. And they don’t, they are people just like everyone else, they have the same functions as us, and we need to start realizing that.”
So how do we see the world? Does the world portray media or does the media portray the world? “As far as learning about other countries, I feel that our public education doesn’t educate us about diverse facts, you only know the wrong things that are happening in other countries. It’s hard not to become interested in something compelling when you find it hard to care about your school life, or you feel as though your teachers are working against you.” In fact, according to Wix, 48% of young Americans found out about news on Facebook! When learning about the rest of the world, sometimes the only image we perceive is a country at war, or full of poverty, when in truth that country can be so much more than what is shown. As Joe says “there are some places in Africa that can be very well organized and look like the best places in America, but we just never hear about them. All we hear about is slums and poverty and this inability to take care of themselves, and that Americans are the ultimate power and we need to take care of them. Everyone seems to be less fortunate than us but that’s so not true. And that’s a false sense of empowerment that I feel has been reenacted even more by the media.” What about the representation of Mexico? I lived in Mexico City, and although there may be corruption, poverty and violence in some places, just like some places in the United States as well, there are also beautiful modern locations with incomparable wealth and infrastructure. But instead, the media’s projection of my country is a place where everyone is a thug and a drug lord.
So why does media do this? Is it to convince us of a stereotype, or to teach us what a stereotype is? It’s like the ‘starter pack’ photos that tell you how to identify a person by what they wear or they’re characteristics. It’s obviously funny- so is it sarcasm, or is it a way of convincing people to see that sort of person as a stereotype? Joe says that like comedy, things we stereotype and find funny are because they’re uncomfortable. “You laugh because you're nervous and it’s something new or crazy. I don't know if it’s pointing towards stereotypes or if it’s pointing them out to say, ‘hey, this is wrong, we probably should fix this.’ You've always got that great divide between two people- those who think that media detrimental [for showing stereotypes] and those who think that it’s beneficial. for the most part, I think that it’s hard to say, because society gets its enlightenment from other people’s pain.” Either way, Joe considers it to be our fault, the viewers, to place name tags on stereotypes, anyway. “As far as tv shows, it’s our fault that we take those characters and put the label of the stereotype on them. We’re saying ‘oh, it’s the stereotypical woman, or it’s a sassy member of the LGBTQ community.’ We’re programmed to point out what’s wrong. We’re saying that because this one character is representative of one characteristic, an entire race or gender can be that same thing.” But be it through sarcasm or not, there are definitely two different groups of people- those who see the stereotype and believe it, and those who see it and recognize it as something wrong and ironic.
But other times, media doesn’t deliver a subtle message to say that a stereotype is wrong. There are times when it promotes stereotypes, and this shapes the way people view themselves, and the way they think. “For the longest time i felt that I didn’t deserve attention or love, because overweight women were never seen as deserving that. They always had to give something up or settle. I think the biggest problem is that it’s person to person, not body to body. it’ more than that, and that should be portrayed in media. We should emphasize character, not bodies.” Ads, ‘self-selected’ news on social media, photos, TV…it all has a certain bias. It’s become commercialized and gives you the stories they believe will have most reads because of the drama. It’s like the muslim at the Louvre which tried to attack soldiers. One man, one religion. But what about the news stories that, according to CNN Sally Kohn states, include the 70 percent of white male population that accounts for violent crimes? Media attracts readers through controversial stories that secluded people, because with stereotypes it’s easier to formulate a pre-identified opinion.
Of course, as Joe and others I interviewed reminded me, “it’s not fair to group all of media because that’s what gets people to become violent- to believe we are more different than we are similar. So I think the problem is that we focus on the media that does that. We have plenty of acceptable and embracing media it’s just that those aren't getting attention because they aren’t controversial enough. In our society presently, our kids need stimulants all the time- things that are more controversial wake you up, so things that are happy and nice don’t get enough attention because they're not what we define as interesting. Even that’s a generalization, saying that we’re all attracted to drama. It’s dividing us more than it’s unifying us.”
Media definitely has stereotypes integrated in all sorts of ways, from TV channels like FOX news to songs such as “All About That Bass" by Meghan Trainor, and it’s important to identify them and realize that it can either be sarcasm, or that because it’s so horrifically honest, you should simply analyze them and avoid following into close-minded beliefs of stereotyping genders, countries, religions, traditions, bodies and people who may not be what the media displays them to be. As Joe summarizes, “don’t promote hate. No matter where you are, where you come from, or where you’re going, you have choices.” And this includes the choice to decide in what to believe in- even media and the way it portrays people.